The West is a dream of almost all people in third world countries. Many would like to come and live here because they heard about the good life that the west has to offer. It obscure to them how challenging is the life of new immigrants adjusting too many different things in a strange land very different from what they used to have. In Simple recipes, Madeline Thein conveys not only the difficulties of an immigrant family adjusting to western culture and ways, but the children’s painful lesson growing up in a western culture and falling out of love to their parents as they don’t see or understand the culture back ground and hardships that the parents have to undertake so the children will have a better life.
One difference between the parents and their children is conveyed in the imagery associated with food making and eating.
Food is a tool the father uses to teach his children about their culture. A lot of description was given to the rice making process. P 356 “he swirled his hands through the water and it turned cloudy”, for eating the parents use chopsticks while the children use spoons. P362 “We eat in silence, scraping our spoons across the dishes. My parents use chopsticks.” The dining table was converted into a culture battle between the Malaysian culture that the father is fighting hard to keep and the western culture, which is appealing to the children, and rejected, by the father.
Symbolism plays an important role in the demonstration of the narrator’s relationship with her father, family ties and culture.
The narrators dreams presents the fathers struggle between holding on to the culture and slowly letting go of it, he seems out of place in the authors dream, he is in old clothes, while the kitchen is sharp and clean “sometimes I still dream of my father, his bare feet against the floor, he wears old buttoned shirts and faded sweatpants drawn at the waist” “the gloss of the kitchen counters, the shiny sink, he looks out of place” P356
The rice presents the fathers trying to teach the narrator about their Malaysian culture. The author symbols her failure to cook rice to her letting go of the culture. P 357” sorry, I would say to the table, my voice soft and embarrassed”
The rice cooker presents the father’s giving up his hope in teaching his children about their culture. P 359 “my father bought me a rice cooker when I first moved into my own apartment.
The fish in the story presents as a symbol of the narrators Malaysian culture slowly fading away, yet struggling to hold on. P357 “the fish is barely breathing” P365”Somewhere in my memory, a fish in the sink is dying slowly” When the fish gets killed, it implies that the family will get separated, and there will be no more room for love, only guilt and hate. P 364 “I do not know how to prevent this from happening again, though now I know, in the end, it will break us apart. This violence will turn all my love to shame and grief”
The father also realizes that this is the end of his trying to keep the Malaysian culture and keep the unity of his family; he cannot do anything about it. P 365 “Even my father, the magician, who can make something beautiful out of nothing, he just stands and watches”
The father feels betrayed when the
